arms of the ocean (deliver me)
by BerryliciousCheerio
Summary: Jemma Simmons leaves in broad daylight / she needs to be alone to return. in which jemma goes on a journey of self-discovery and accidentally adopts six teenagers somewhere along the way.


**my life is trash i have so much homework to do and instead i decide to write kind of shitty jemma centric one shots. you're welcome america (and not america. i'm trash)**

**disclaimed**

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><p>...<p>

Jemma Simmons leaves in broad daylight; sunshine and air and wind and leaves fluttering around her. It is the first time she has been above ground in weeks. May is the only one that sees her out.

Jemma has not seen Coulson in days, and Trip is needed on an op; Skye refused to look at her when Jemma told her that she was leaving. And Fitz—

Fitz has been awake for two weeks. But his mind is—

broken. Fractured. Ruined. And that is only what Fitz has said about himself.

There is something inherently freeing, moving about in the light. Something that makes her feel like she is okay. May does not hug her, but catches her arm and slips an envelope into her hand.

It's probably money.

Jemma Simmons leaves, and she is okay.

...

She goes first to the coast.

Her time in America has been spent on academia—university and doctorates and SHIELD. And Fitz was never a fan of the ocean; granted, neither is she, now. But this is—

this was always something she wanted to do. And these past few months, Jemma thinks she may have lost sight of herself; allowed herself to become too much of Fitzsimmons. The team viewed them as a unit, a whole. That may be accurate to some degree, but—she was—she _is_ a whole unto herself.

And the beach is beautiful.

She stays clear of the water, choosing instead to lay out at the edge of the sand. She stays for an hour, only a little rosy because—well, she's British. She thinks that if she'd stayed any longer, she would have progressed to red, startlingly quickly.

She stays in a motel on the boardwalk and does not let herself think.

...

Her parents want her to come to England—to come home. But home has become such a nebulous concept to her; it should be her parents, the home in which she grew up, but instead she sees Fitz and Skye, May and Coulson, even Ward. She sees a cramped bunk with chemical formulas written on the walls, from nights when she found no sleep. She sees a lab with room for two.

So she stays in the States, stays close—

ish.

Trip calls quite a bit, to check up on her, she supposes. Coulson often hijacks the phone calls, and May will greet her when prompted in the distance. She can occasionally hear Skye in the background, and she sounds hollowed out and whole, all at once, and Jemma is afraid for her.

She never hears Fitz.

Sometimes she worries. But mostly she thinks that he is healing. Getting better.

Maybe he doesn't want to talk to her. And that is fine. They need to learn to be apart.

The shortness of breath she gets when she thinks about him in PT, alone, must be a symptom of separation.

It has to be.

...

She goes to Sci-Tech for nostalgia's sake. The campus is trashed—there's blood on the lobby's floor. The lecture hall smells of death. The bodies have been cleared out—by who, she's not sure.

She finds six teenagers in the Boiler Room. They are blood splattered, and two of the girls have her at gunpoint the moment she rounds the corner on them. Four girls, two boys. She recognizes one from her and Fitz's lecture, months ago.

When they recognize her, one of the boys begins to cry. A girl starts to shake. The two with guns stay on her, and one of them barks, "Hydra?"

"Would you believe me if I said I wasn't?"

The girls stare at her, then at each other. They holster their weapons.

"How did you—why are you here?" There are three that are crying now, and Jemma does not think that they had much of a plan.

"How are you here?"

...

Eliza Hashimoto, Sci-Tech; Nizar Al-Jamil, Ops; Preston Scott, Sci-Tech; Amira Rush, Comms; Molly McKinnon, Ops; Hana Cho, Comms.

They moved in pairs, they tell her. Big groups of loyal SHIELD cadets splitting off into duos when they realized they would be spotted easily by Hydra. Hana and Amira, the girls from Communications, the two with guns, tell her that their group was ambushed at the campus. They watched twenty of their classmates die—Amira's girlfriend was killed in the fight.

"It wasn't much of a battle," Amira tells her, eyes dead and voice hollow. "We had so little combat training—."

Hana grabs her hand. Jemma can't imagine—at least she had Trip. At least she was found by Hand. And Comms kids—Sci-Tech gets weapons, Ops gets combat, and Comms gets gunned down in their sleep.

Preston adds, "We got the distress signal." "

We figured out how to amplify a radio wave to SHIELD frequencies," Eliza continues, picking at the fraying edge of her shirt. "We all—we're all the survivors of our groups."

"That made it here?" Jemma wants to be hopeful. She needs to be hopeful.

"That stayed loyal."

The silence that follows is deafening.

...

They hole up in motels, new ones every week. They—they're just kids, Jemma realizes one day, watching Hana send a series of texts to her family. Molly sits poolside, jeans rolled up to the knee, kicking water at Preston. Nizar shows Eliza how to create a crossbow out of paperclips. And Amira draws.

They're infants—practically fetuses.

When they were born, Jemma was designing toxins and antidotes. She buys them a lot of candy bars, as if that could possibly repair the damage they've suffered. She calls Coulson to tell him that she may have recruits—but she makes it clear that they are young and fractured and healing, and that she refuses to bring them into a situation that they may regret.

It's a Tuesday when Eliza asks if they're roadtripping.

...

(Jemma has to work very hard to say, "No, we're not. This is serious business—Preston, stop laughing at me!")

...

They roadtrip.

It's inevitable.

They need to keep moving, and there's no way she's leaving them on their own, prime for Hydra to pick off. She trades her car in for a minivan, because that's inconspicuous right? She's the only one that has an actual license—

granted, it's fake, but _still_.

Some of their families live abroad, but those that don't they visit.

Amira's father is a lonely man that cries when his daughter get out of the car, and Eliza's sister hugs her like she might never let go. Preston asks to visit a cemetery, and Jemma has to look away. She procures a laptop for the others, to Skype with parents and siblings.

Most had family in SHIELD—

Nizar whispers ashamedly one night that his brother was Hydra. He emphasizes _was,_ and Jemma worries for him. Amira's mother was killed at the Triskelion. They all have crosses to bear.

Jemma thinks that she may have made a mistake. She is only twenty six—but she's a decade older than the youngest, Eliza.

She has to be here for them.

She has to take care of them.

...

Days pass in a blur.

They spend half their time in malls, in arcades, in diners—anyplace Hydra won't be, really. At some point, she takes them to a museum. It's weirdly—it's good, it is, but it's domestic and calm and nothing at all like what she wants. But—it's good. It's what she needs.

Eliza asks if they can make a video montage.

...

(she realizes with a start that she has not thought about Fitz in two days—

he is a distant galaxy now)

...

(no, that is a lie, and Jemma Simmons was never very good at lying.

Fitz is the sun, turning into a red giant, threatening to swallow her whole; a tether that has frayed.

She needs to be alone to return)

...

She has good days—weeks. It's easy to fall into routine when you aren't alone.

And then—

_and then_—

Skye calls her.

Jemma's a little shocked.

"Why did you leave?" Skye sounds very small, and very alone. Jemma feels the weight of it all settle on her shoulders—Skye is twenty two, if that. She didn't—she was thrown into this, at the worst possible time. And then Ward and Fitz and—

Jemma _left _her.

So she tells the truth.

"I was a crutch." Her voice only shakes a little. "And I was only a part of Fitzsimmons."

She thinks that Skye might be crying. She wishes she could see her.

"I killed someone," Skye whispers.

Jemma hesitates. They've all had to compromise their morals. Fitz shot someone. Jemma threw herself on a grenade; she was ready to shoot the first person that threatened her team. They're kids themselves.

"We've all had to do things we didn't want to."

"Jemma," Skye breathes. "I didn't shoot him."

...

She learns about Fitz's hallucinations on the tenth week. May tells her, in her measured way. And everything sort of crashes down around her. There's this empty thing, a black hole opening in her chest and destroying everything around it.

She left to force him to heal—she never thought that leaving would make it worse. And she is angry—so, _so _angry. At the team, at Coulson, at Fitz, at herself. They've just left him to himself, to talk to thin air on his own, and only now thought to inform her.

She tells the kids that they're going underground.

...

(in short—

everything went to shit when she left, and Jemma can't help the guilt that threatens to crush her)

...

Coulson looks only a little surprise when she leads six teenagers into his office. She introduces them by academy—"Sci-Tech, Ops, Comms," she tells him, pointing to the pairs in turn. "Where's Fitz?"

Coulson looks pale.

"Med-bay."

She starts to run.

Stops.

"Skye?"

He looks dead.

"Containment."

...

She goes to see Skye first. Because that's—

that should be easier, right?

Her eyes are red—the blood vessels have all burst in the sclera and it looks like she hasn't slept in days. "Simmons?"

It's not easier.

"Skye, what—?" Her clothes are covered in blood, her arms bruised. "What happened to you?" Her cell is bare. Nails cut short.

"I fought May."

"Why?"

She shrugs. "Something came over me. There was this—this wave of black. And then I woke up here."

Protocol dictates they should have put her down. But this is Skye. When has protocol ever applied to Skye?

"Skye—."

"You should see Fitz," she interrupts.

"I—."

She'll be back.

She'll be back.

She bites her lip and walks towards the med-bay.

...

"Bloody hell, not again!"

Jemma ducks the mug thrown at her, flinches as it shatters.

"Get out! You're not real!" He hasn't shaved in days. Or slept. Maybe even eaten.

She moves closer, hesitantly.

"Fitz, I'm here. I'm real."

He squeezes his eyes shut. Hits a call button. "It's happening again!" he screams. "The medication isn't helping!"

He sounds so tired. Her heart twists. "Fitz—," she begins.

"Just go away, would you? I can't—." He breaks off, pulling at his hair, whimpering.

She sits on his bed.

"Leopold Fitz."

He looks at her, finally, fully. "Jemma?"

She reaches for his hand and he doesn't pull away.

...

Here is what Jemma Simmons knows; she needed to be alone to return.

Her place is with the team, with Fitz, but she needed to remember what it was to be Simmons. But she is not meant to run.

She is meant to roll her sleeves up, to dive into the mess, the chaos; she is meant to study galaxies, to discover answers. She is meant to go where help is needed. And Skye and Fitz—

they need her help.

She is meant to be here.

...

_fin_

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><p><strong>im a fucking meeeessssss. like what the fuck i meant to have this up after the premiere but i was emotionally compromised so here it is ur welcome nerds<strong>

**(please love me love this)**

**((have i mentioned i'm trash?))**


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